Harriett Romo

Harriett Romo

Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas

Areas Of Expertise

Education & Certification

Harriett Romo, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA). She is also the Director of the Child & Adolescent Policy Research Institute, and the Director of UTSA Mexico Center. She directed the Inter University Program for Latino Research at the Center for Mexican American Studies at UT Austin from 1985-1990 and served as Assistant Professor at Texas State in Sociology and an Associate Professor at UT Austin in Education before starting at UTSA in 1999. Her research has involved collaborations with the University of Washington, Seattle to study language acquisition of infants in bilingual homes and with Mexican universities to study transnational families in San Antonio funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

She has published articles on language acquisition, foster youth, immigrant children, and Mexican immigrant families. Her textbook, Race and Ethnic Relations in America (with S. Dale McLemore), is used widely in college sociology classes. Harriett received grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development focused on early childhood education and how housing impacts college access for foster youth. She has evaluated Early Reading First, Head Start, Early Head Start, and Even Start projects. Harriett received a $1 million endowment from the Bank of America to fund the CAPRI and grants from the federal government and foundations to fund the Mexico Center. Her book, Latino High School Graduation (with Toni Falbo), was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Prize and featured at the American Sociological Association meeting. She published a review essay on Mexican transnational immigration in the Journal Latin American Politics and Society, Spring 2009, has an edited book (with Raquel Marquez) Transformations of La Familia on the U.S,-Mexico Border with Notre Dame Press, 2008, and has an edited collection of research on Mexico published by the University of Veracruz in 2012. Harriett directed grants from the U.S. Health and Human Services for nine years that helped Head Start teachers earn associate and bachelor’s degrees.